| Doppelgänger | |
| Other Names: | |
| Doubleganger | |
| Images: | |
| – | |
| "Double-goer."
Doppelgängers are ghostly doubles that can be seen in
reflections of mirrors. For example, while looking at a
mirror, you see a reflection of someone you know, but
turning around to view the person, you see that he is not
there—the image viewed in the mirror was actually a
doppelgänger. Doppelgängers are ill-omened: seeing
one's doppelgänger portended one's death. Queen
Elizabeth I was said to have seen her doppelgänger
laying pale and still on her deathbed shortly before she
died. Geothe and Shelley reportedly saw theirs as well. Witches were thought to be able to cast
out their doppelgängers to do their bidding as if they
were familiars. Thus crimes against them could be proven
even if they were not at the scene: it was reasoned that
they had their doppelgängers do their bidding. On Halloween, if a girl lights two candles to a mirror and eats an apple in front of it, she will see her future husband's doppelgänger, staring at her through the mirror as if he were right behind her shoulders. Furthermore, if she ventured to a graveyard and walked around it fully twelve times, she would actually meet the ghostly double. Another belief states that if one wanted to see who would die in the upcoming year, one would have to stand near the church door throughout the feast day of St. Mark (April 24); at midnight, the doppelgängers of those that would soon die continue single-filed on a solemn procession into the church. Also, when a death has just occurred in a household, custom dictates that all the mirrors be covered since the soul of anyone passing by the glass could be snatched away by the recently deceased's doppelgänger and taken to the netherworld. |